


Stained

by Anonymous



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Date Rape Drug/Roofies, Gen, Isolation, Mind Manipulation, Mind Rape, Past Child Abuse, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape Related PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 06:55:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1336198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does it feel like for a drugged telepath to be raped, to know everything about his attacker and feel everything his assailant feels and yet not be able to do anything about it?</p><p>Charles finds out one night in an alley outside of a bar in Oxford. The fallout leaves him in shambles, but he survives as best he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> An old kink meme fic. Archived here for safe keeping.
> 
> Here's the link to the original post on LJ: http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/3278.html?thread=3878350#t3878350
> 
> Please take the warnings very seriously. This is not a happy fic. The rape is in no way romanticized and the repercussions are far from pleasant. Please proceed with caution.

Charles glanced behind at Raven, lying fast asleep on the couch beside his abandoned thesis, one more time before grabbing his keys and slinking quietly out into the hallway. He moved to lock the door behind him, but put it off for a moment, resting his forehead against the solid wood of the door to their apartment.  
  
He didn’t know what was wrong with her lately. They’d always been so close. He hadn’t hesitated to promise to stay out of her head all those years ago because he knew her so well he didn’t  _need_  telepathy to know what she was thinking.  
  
But she had changed, or maybe he had changed. He didn’t know.  
  
He could feel her drifting away and he didn’t even know why. The not knowing was perhaps the worst part. He just couldn’t understand what he was doing wrong. He just wanted to protect her, to keep her safe. She didn’t understand how dangerous the world could be for people like them if they weren’t careful. She couldn’t hear the darkest thoughts that haunted him like specters, the ones that allowed him to understand just what people were capable of.   
  
People were capable of good too, of course. And most days he preferred to focus on that aspect of humanity; he knew he’d go insane if he didn’t. However, much as he liked to believe the best in humanity, he couldn’t ignore the danger to Raven. She was his responsibility, even if he seemed to be getting progressively worse at making her happy.  
  
What if…what if she left?  
  
The thought left him cold. She joked about being his only friend, but she was right. She was his only friend, his only family. If she left he’d truly be alone again.  
  
He closed his eyes tightly as his brilliant mind painted a museum of images detailing  _exactly_  what such a world would look like. He shook his head, doing his best to banish such thoughts from his mind. Dwelling on the slowly widening divide gaping between him and his sister would not make the situation better.   
  
He opened his eyes and sighed. He really needed a drink.  
  
Charles locked the door and turned on his heel, firmly set on having a few pints to settle his overactive brain.

***  
  
Normally Charles was very careful with the places he chose to get blitzed.  
  
He’d learned that lesson rather painfully a few years ago when he’d had the bad sense to get crocked in a less than savory bar with a few classmates. His inebriated self’s walls had slipped, leaving him wide open to the aching, drunken pain emanating from the line of men hunched over at the bar.  
  
The dark depression that had dogged him for  _weeks_  after the incident had convinced him to steer clear of such places.  
  
Mostly.  
  
But while the happy buzz that went part and parcel with university pubs filled to the brim with brilliant young minds high on life was usually a wonderful way to have a bit of fun, he really wasn’t in the mood for such antics.  
  
He walked for a while, passing more than a few pubs on the way. Some were too loud, others too quiet. None of them seemed right and it was driving him crazy. He knew he was being careful for a reason, but his mind was still racing with thoughts of Raven and he was growing impatient. He wanted to  _stop_  his blasted mind from running in pointless circles, not encourage it with a relaxing walk.  
  
Charles scowled at himself. He wasn’t planning on getting blitzed, just having a few drinks and going home to bed.  
  
He ducked into the very next pub he passed.  
  
***  
  
He almost immediately wished he’d waited a little bit longer before becoming fed up with searching.  
  
The pub was packed, but gloomy and though he knew people were having a good time, could feel their overflowing drunken thoughts lapping against his shields, he immediately disliked the place.  
  
But he couldn’t just turn around and leave, could he?  
  
Charles could feel eyes on him, thoughts about him, about how he was obviously not from around here…among other things. He felt very exposed and just wanted to blend into the woodwork. A spare thought made it so and then he was back at the beginning, wondering if he’d be better off in here with the drunks or out there alone with his unhindered mind.  
  
Well, when he put it that way…  
  
What harm could it do? He was just getting a few drinks, nothing more. He had a pretty high alcohol tolerance and would leave before he lost control of his powers. Then he’d go home to bed and in the morning he’d work on finishing up his thesis so that he could have the time and attention to spare on figuring out what was bothering his sister.  
  
Yes. That was what he would do.

***  
  
Several pints later Charles wasn’t sure why he had been so concerned about the pub. It wasn’t a happy place, but it was certainly filled with a very distracting hum of energy that kept his mind from focusing on anything serious for too long.  
  
He sat alone at the bar, or rather, he had been alone, because at some point the thought that had been keeping him unremarkable and out of people’s thoughts had faltered. He only noticed this when a young woman had leaned into his space to flirt.  
  
Charles wasn’t interested, but on a whim decided that maybe some company would help him feel better. He let her pull him from his seat and over to a crowd of people that she may or may not have been friends with. He lost track of her rather quickly, but was tipsy and didn’t mind all that much. Drinks were pressed into his hands and he swallowed them down with a sloppy drunken grin and everything was fine. He couldn’t even remember why he was there in the first place, but something told him that was a good thing.   
  
And everything was good. He rode the blurring flow of emotions and thoughts, less positive than he usually preferred and perhaps louder than he might have liked, but he rode the wave and it was good.  
  
He giggled drunkenly as he felt a hand on his arm. Someone was tugging on his arm, pulling him from the crowd. He went, because, why shouldn’t he?  
  
And then he felt the cool night air on his face.  
  
When had he left the pub?  
  
Still, there was a hand guiding him. It was a big hand, attached to a tall man who was walking with his back to Charles, walking with purpose.  
  
Charles was confused. He reached out with his mind, trying to find where he’d lost track of himself, but found that he couldn’t focus, could barely stand upright. He  _could_  feel the man, though. He was…hungry?  
  
No, that wasn’t right. It was like hunger, but not. Hotter, maybe? He knew it, had felt it before, and yet he couldn’t…  
  
Charles wondered dazedly why it was suddenly so hard to make sense of something so simple, but then he couldn’t wonder because he was being pushed into a wall and there was a hand cupping his jaw and a hand on his cock.

He instinctively tried to shy away from the hands, his muddled mind unable to grasp what they were trying to do, but not liking it all the same. The man paid no attention to his discomfort and simply pressed closer, pinning Charles to the back alley wall with his entire body.  
  
Charles opened his mouth to protest, but he couldn’t seem to form words. A garbled mess of sound slipped from his lips. The man laughed and bent his face to Charles’ ear.  
  
“You’re a pretty one, aren’t you?” the man murmured. Charles could feel the man’s breath hot on the side of his face as the man said things that made no sense at all.   
  
 _Mmm, he’ll feel so good on my cock. Little whore was asking for it, the way he was carrying on. Can’t wait, wonder if he’ll scream…_  
  
Charles squirmed at the monologue running through his mind, no the other’s mind. He wanted this man –  _Andrew Sanders, aged 37, recently divorced, nothisfault notnotnot soangrylonelydesperatehungry_  – to get off of him, away from him and out of his head. But his mind wasn’t cooperating, his shields were in shambles and he couldn’t even begin to piece them back together, couldn’t even remember how.  
  
Large hands raked over his chest, tearing loose several buttons and sending them flying, bouncing on the dirty ground of the alleyway like stones skipping across a pond and –   
  
Charles tried to focus on what was happening, but the moment he did he felt sick. He told his arms to move, to reach out and push, but his hands could only paw weakly at the man’s chest.  
  
Sanders laughed again and Charles felt  _anticipationgreedhunger_  and the man didn’t even bother to push Charles’ hands aside, simply reached down and began undoing Charles’ belt.  
  
A shock of hot arousal pulsed in his mind. Where was it coming from? Was that him? No. No, no, no. It wasn’t him. It  _wasn’t._  It was Sanders, in his head, feeling this hunger, this lust for… for him.  
  
And then,  _then_  he understood. He had felt this before, before shields, before Raven. He had felt dozens of people, women and men, in alleys like this or in their own homes, and that awful one-sided lust as they took and took and took and there was never anything he could do but cry and cover his ears even though that could never silence the screams inside his head –   
  
The horrifying realization came to him at a distance, noticed only on the periphery of his clouded mind because the rest of him was too full of  _Andrew, call me Andy, Sanders_  and he couldn’t  _think._  
  
He just wanted to go home.

He felt Sanders’ hand on his suddenly bare hip and noticed dully that his pants and underwear were pooled around his ankles, caught on his shoes.

‘When did that happen?’ He wondered hazily.

_Look at that, the little slut is hard already. Practically begging for it, the poof._

And he  _was_  semi-hard, which made him feel nauseous. His body trembled, and the fog in his mind began to clear under the heat of his shame. He was going to be sick. Did he like this? How could he like this?

Sanders’ other hand griped Charles’ cock, tightly, painfully, giving it a rough pull that made Charles want to cry or scream or both.

_Stop._  Charles tried to force the thought on Sanders, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t and years of practice and control were gonegonegone stolen by drink and  _oh lord, what was in those drinks_  and Sanders didn’t stop.

Two fingers were shoved forcefully into Charles’ mouth, pressing down on his tongue and thrusting deep into his throat. Charles gagged and bit down weakly on the fingers.

Sanders cursed and withdrew his hand. Then he slapped Charles, knocking the telepath’s head against the wall and leaving a wet line of saliva down the side of his face.

_Ungrateful little bitch,_  the thought echoed low and dark in Charles’ mind and the world  _blurred_  as Sanders spun him around by the shoulders and slammed him into the wall.

Charles’ hands scrabbled desperately at the wall, but Sanders was a heavy weight on his back, forcing Charles’ cock to rub uncomfortably against the grimy, jagged bricks and it  _hurt._

Panic rose in his chest, fighting off the delirium of alcohol and something else. And then there were hands on his bare ass, pulling him apart obscenely and he wanted to scream, but all that escaped his mouth was a plaintive whine that had Sanders laughing in his ear.

_Eager, isn’t he? Oh, he’ll feel so good. Practically begging for it._

Something foreign and slightly damp pushed into him and he tried to get away, pressed himself into the wall, dragging his cock painfully against the bricks with his frantic movements, but no matter what he did he couldn’t escape the sensation. The thing, Sanders’ finger was  _inside_  of him and he felt anticipation, nonono, fear, he felt fear and then there was something else, another finger pushing into him, stretching his insides and why wasn’t he fighting, why would he fight it, of course he would fight it – 

Then fingers were gone and he dared to hope it was over even though the endless array of images running through his,  _no,_  Sanders’ mind, told him it was only the beginning. 

Sanders’ clothed crotch pressed against his ass and large hands gripped Charles’ hips so tightly, burning like a brand on his skin –   
  
There was the sound of a zipper being undone and there was a long pause  _–sweetdeliciousanticipation–_  and then hands were pulling him open and –   
  
Something much larger than a Sanders’ fingers drove into him, tearing through resisting muscles and tissue without any hesitation, and –   
  
 _Pain._  
  
The pain tore through his entire body, splitting him down the middle, but he was happy, so happy, because with agony came the barest hint of sobriety and he tore at Sanders’ mind, desperate and terrified, ordering him to  _get out! Out! Stop, stop it, now!_  
  
The thing inside of him disappeared and Charles managed to turn himself around and see the man that had attacked him, backed up against the opposite wall, frozen like a statue with his fly open and his cock still hanging out. Charles felt relief wash over him, but he immediately regretted the lapse. The moment his attention wavered the daze of the alcohol and whatever else he had been given flooded back to the forefront of his consciousness and his tentative grip on the man slipped.  
  
Sanders stared at him across the alley for a long moment in obvious confusion, but the blank look on his face and the blessed emptiness in his mind vanished in moments.   
  
He felt Sanders –  _rage and confusion, tricky little freak and how dare he_  – in his head again, screaming inside of him, impossible to ignore. The man surged across the space between them, grabbed Charles by the collar of his shirt and threw him to the ground.  
  
Charles couldn’t force his sluggish body to move fast enough and he fell hard. His head bounced on the concrete and the world swam.   
  
Sanders kicked him in the stomach, knocking the breath out of him. Charles instinctively tried to curl into a ball, but Sanders simply kicked him again and again until he lay still on the ground.  
  
Charles bit back on a whimper and tried to use the pain in his stomach to help him focus long enough to regain some control over his mind. The pain was nothing in comparison to Sanders’ initial breech, though, and he was left grasping at smoke, completely unable to fight back.

And then Sanders was pulling him to his knees and gripping his face with too large hands. Charles attempted to keep his mouth shut, but Sanders easily pried his jaw open and then his mouth was full of Sanders’ cock.  
  
Charles gagged and tried to bite down but he couldn’t control his muscles enough to do more than graze Sanders’ penis with his teeth.  
  
Sanders moaned and thrust sharply into Charles’ mouth. Charles’ head suddenly swam with pleasure, and it was  _his_  cock being enveloped by a hot, wet cavern. For a moment he was lost in the sensation, the intense pleasure of getting his cock sucked, but when Sanders removed himself from Charles’ mouth, the feeling vanished and he was left feeling confused and empty and sick because he hadn’t wanted that but had enjoyed it anyway.  
  
Charles collapsed in on himself like an abandoned marionette and vomited at Sanders’ feet.  
  
The man hissed in disgust. He grabbed a fistful of Charles’ hair and dragged the telepath deeper into the alley, away from the steaming mixture of regurgitated precum and alcohol.  
  
Sanders carelessly let Charles drop to the floor and Charles barely had a moment to gasp for breath before Sanders was climbing on top of him, brimming with  _impatience and lust and finally, finally, fucking whore, going to feel so good wrapped around me._  
  
And then Sanders was thrusting into him, the way eased only by a thin layer of saliva and –   
  
 _God._  
  
Agony, pure agony filled his entire world as Sander cleaved him in two, shredded his insides –  
  
Sanders pulled himself out, fingers digging into Charles’ hips, before forcing himself violently back into Charles’ ass. Out again, then in once more. Out and in and out and in Sanders went, setting a mercilessly unrelenting rhythm as he thrust into Charles’ prone body.  
  
 _Good. So good, tight, hot, gripping his cock like a sleeve, a little rough at first, but getting easier, always easier with a little blood to smooth the way._  
  
And Charles was torn between a moan and a scream, the pain of his shredded insides combating with the pleasure emanating from his cock, no, not his, it was Sanders’, not his. The excitement was all in Sanders’ head, but Charles couldn’t hold onto himself, couldn’t stay safe inside his own head. That horrible mind kept pulling him in, swallowing him whole, drowning him in cruel lust and foreign pleasure until Charles didn’t know who he was anymore, assailant or victim or both.   
  
Sanders continued to thrust, in and out, in and out, and it felt like it would never end, like he would be trapped like this forever. Charles’ fingers grasped weakly at the dirty pavement, his pain and Sanders’ ecstasy so thoroughly intertwined in his addled mind that if he could form words he didn’t know if he’d beg the man to stop or keep going.  
  
The shame that stirred at that thought made him want to retch again.

But there wasn’t time for that because Sanders was moving faster, driving harder and harder into Charles and the pleasure and pain in Charles’ mind skyrocketed along with his thrusts.  
  
And then Sanders pulsed inside of Charles and  _came_ , dragging Charles over the edge in his wake.  
  
When his vision cleared, Charles realized that Sanders had collapsed on top of him, completely spent, his cock still buried deep inside of Charles.  
  
Charles lay numb beneath Sanders and his all-encompassing contentment and hoped deliriously that Sanders would go away now that the show was over.  
  
After what seemed like an eternity, Sanders seemed to remember where he was. He pulled himself roughly out of Charles. The movement tore him open all over again, but it was the slosh of semen spilling out of his ass and onto his legs that truly made him sick.  
  
“Thanks for the ride, pretty,” Sanders said to Charles’ still form with an air of mock civility.  
  
Then he laughed that horrible grating laugh again and gave Charles’ side one last kick before he pulled up his pants and stumbled back toward the lip of the alley. 


	2. Chapter 2

And then, finally,  _finally,_  Sanders’ presence receded from his head and Charles’ mind could slowly begin to rebuild itself.  
  
Only then, with his senses returning to him, did the initial numbness fade, making him fully aware of the excruciating amount of pain centered in his lower half. He felt as though his entire body had been split open from the inside. A strangled whimper escaped from his throat; he could still feel Sanders inside of him. Thrusting in and out, taking everything that Charles had and destroying it, shattering him into a thousand pieces.  
  
But no matter how much it hurt, all the agony in the world could not hide the feeling of his own cum cooling against his stomach and thighs, there for anyone to see –   
  
And he hated it, hated that he had come as well, hated that he had  _enjoyed_  what Sanders had done to him. He had enjoyed it, hadn’t he? Why else would his body react that way? Why didn’t he fight harder? He didn’t understand how this had happened, how he could have  _allowed_  this to happen to himself.   
  
He could still see Sanders’ face. Despite the darkness of the alley and the clouding influence of whatever had been in his drink, he could remember the man’s face with perfect clarity as though it had been burned into his retina. He could still feel that man’s mind swallowing him down in unwanted pleasure...could still see himself reflected in those vicious, lusting eyes.  
  
 _Whore,_  the word echoed in his mind, but the thought was not his own. It was not.  _Slut,_  the slurs resounded in his head  _–bitch–_  but he wasn’t any of those things.  _Look at that, hard already…_  He could feel Sanders behind his eyes, cooing into his ear.  _Eager, practically begging for it–_  
  
His stomach churned and he heaved, expelling bile and still more alcohol onto the pavement. For a moment he considered allowing himself to fall face first in the vomit and, hopefully, drown in it.  
  
He wanted to die; he realized in surprise and pushed himself away from the mess he made with all his strength. He didn’t get very far. All his strength had been reduced to a pathetic sum and that one movement alone had sent a spike of pure agony down his spine.  
  
He wanted to die. Was he really that pathetic?

He was, of course. He was pathetic and disgusting and weak and maybe if he was dead the pain would  _stop_ …but he was also a coward.  
  
Charles managed to turn on his side and curled in on himself, and even though the movement induced jagged splinters of pain deep inside his body and caused his vision to darken dangerously, he felt better, safer like this. He let out a choked laugh at the ridiculousness of his all too human instincts. He was lying on the ground in a dark alley, his pants around his ankles, his body brutalized, and he was taking  _comfort_  in the fetal position?  
  
He laughed and laughed, desperate gasping giggles that left his body trembling in pain. He was hysterical, but even as some distant part of his mind realized that he wasn’t laughing anymore, he found that he couldn’t stop, and the tears continued to stream down his face.  
  
Eventually he ran out of tears to spill and simply laid on the dirty concrete, trying and failing to ignore the cum that was slowly drying on his stomach and legs and back.  
  
In the distance he could hear the muted sounds of traffic and wondered with a sort of absentminded masochism how long his encounter with Sanders had lasted. The thought almost made him laugh again, so he tried to focus on repairing his mental walls.  
  
Focus came much easier now, though he hadn’t had to work so hard on maintaining control in  _years_  and all he had to show for his efforts was a cobbled together mess of defenses that only worked because most of the world around him was sleeping and quiet.  
  
The return of some semblance of control was soothing and for the first time Charles remembered that there was a world outside of this alley where Andrew Sanders had –   
  
Charles was suddenly struck by an intense desire to see his sister, to know that she was safe and warm on the couch where he had left her, that this… _thing_  that had happened to him had left her untouched.   
  
It was only on the strength of his longing to see his dear, beautiful, sister that he managed to get shakily to his feet. He sagged against the alley wall almost immediately, panting for breath. He felt as though he’d been run through a meat grinder and every single movement he made sent bolts of agony racing down his spine.  
  
And he was tired.  _So tired._  He just wanted to lay down and never get up again.  
  
But if he did that, he’d never see Raven again.  
  
So Charles closed his eyes and did his best to shut down the part of his mind that processed pain. He was only partially successful, having never needed to subdue so much pain before, but the numbness that settled over his body was fortifying enough that he could pull up his pants and begin to make his way home.

***  
  
The journey back to the flat was a haze of darkened streets and continuous desperate thoughts of  _don’t look, don’t see, not here, not here, not here_  at the odd passerby and above all there was that insidious pain creeping in over the edges, waiting to consume him in fire.  
  
His body was on autopilot. He knew all too well that if he put too much thought into anything his fragile control would fall to pieces. So he didn’t think and didn’t even notice he was home until his key was turning in the lock and there was his sister, curled up on the couch.  
  
He sagged against the doorframe. Whatever strength had carried him home was suddenly gone and all he could do was drink in her peaceful sleeping face. She looked young and innocent and so content. He wanted to stumble to her side and cling to her, try to absorb the safety that lingered in this warm, dry place.  
  
He could see it in his mind. He would touch her shoulder and she would start awake in annoyance until she saw how he looked and realized that something had happened. Then she would hold him and take care of him, soothe the pain away like it was all just a bad dream –   
  
But he also knew that she would inevitably come to pity him. He could picture the concern, and perhaps fear, in her eyes. She would know how powerless he had been to take care of himself and she would never again be able to trust him to take care of her. He could see their already strained relationship falling apart over this…lapse, this weakness.  
  
She would leave.  
  
She would be better off without him, of course. But he was selfish, horribly selfish. Even if he deserved to be alone, after –   
  
He didn’t want her to leave.  
  
And she shouldn’t be forced to deal with his mistakes, anyway.  
  
She didn’t need to know.  
  
Charles nodded slowly to himself. He felt calmer now that he had a plan. Especially since it was a good plan. She would never need to know and could stay like she was now, happy and safe and innocent. And everything would be fine, he would make it fine. Even though he was flawed and unworthy of her and her trust, he would do everything in his power to protect her. He would.  
  
Charles took a shaky step into the room. Before he got far he was already turning back and dead bolting the door. The lock seemed far more flimsy than it had ever seemed in the past. He wondered if it would  _really_  hold up to an intruder that wanted to come inside.  
  
He fought the urge to barricade the door with the solid mahogany writing desk. For one, he wouldn’t be able to push it in his current state. For another, Raven would definitely notice that he had rearranged the furniture while she slept.  
  
The lock would be enough.  
  
Probably.

He took a deep breath and surveyed the room. It was a nice room. Rich dark colors and clean lines. He suddenly felt horribly self-conscious. Just a few hours ago he had fit in this room, on that couch, right at Raven’s side. Now he felt like an outsider, a foreign contaminant that was slowly polluting this peaceful space. He didn’t belong. Not anymore.  
  
His skin itched.  
  
He was dirty.   
  
So dirty.  
  
Charles stumbled blindly toward the bathroom where Raven had stood earlier that evening, brushing her teeth and muttering to herself about something that slipped his mind. He made far too much noise, but Raven slept deeply and soon he was inside and locking the door behind him.  
  
That made two locked doors between Sanders and him.  
  
It was suddenly just a little bit easier to breathe.  
  
He managed to kick off his shoes but couldn’t bear the thought of taking off his clothing, so he climbed into the shower fully dressed and turned the shower on as hot as it would go. Boiling hot water pounded into him, drenching his clothing and weighing him down like an anchor. Charles blindly grabbed the bar of soap. He rubbed the bar desperately over his covered skin until his legs gave out and he could only curl up in a tiny ball of pain on the floor of the shower.  
  
But then he couldn’t’ breathe. He was drowning. Charles clawed at his clothing. The few buttons left attached to his shirt clinked as they bounced on the tiling, but the shirt came off. His sodden pants were more difficult, though they remained unbuttoned and unzipped since Charles’ hands had been to clumsy to refasten them after –   
  
He gasped in pain as he violently kicked his legs. It hurt. It hurt so much, but he didn’t care because he desperately needed get the binding clothing  _off. Get it off. Please, oh please, get him away from me._  
  
And then they were off and every movement was agony, but he had to get rid of them, so he kicked them into the corner, awayawayaway.  
  
Clean. He just wanted to be clean.  
  
He grabbed for the soap again. It slipped through his fingers, but he needed it, needed it so much so he chased it with grasping fingers and then he had it.  
  
He scrubbed himself raw; raking his fingernails over his skin, until he came to the place that hurt the most. He wanted to ignore that place, pretend it wasn’t there. But the urge to be clean was greater than his desire to forget, and so he cautiously reached back – 

His fingers came back to him covered in a strange pinkish mixture that washed away in the shower spray before he realized what it was.  
  
Blood and cum.  
  
He was  _bleeding_  and it shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it  _was_  and he retched again. There was nothing left for him to vomit this time except stomach bile and the mess quickly disappeared down the drain as though it had never been there at all.  
  
Charles wished he could peel off his skin and watch it swirl away in a flow of water, too.  
  
Maybe then he’d be clean again.  
  
That was a silly thought and he knew it. He was having trouble focusing. His vision was blurry around the edges and he felt like he was floating away. But he couldn’t, not yet. He was still so dirty and he could still feel Sanders –  
  
He didn’t know when he had dropped the soap again, but he found it and went back to scrubbing, desperately trying to clean his genitals and his…his –   
  
But no matter how hard he scoured himself, he could still feel the film of cum and dirt and  _blood_  coating his skin.  
  
And he just, he just wanted it to  _stop._  
  
It was over.  
  
He was home and it was over, so whywhywhy could he still see the scene playing out behind his eyelids, feel that man inside his head, so full of lust and anger and  _why shouldn’t I? He’s right there, pretty slut, and haven’t had any since the bitch left and won’t this be fun –_  
  
He dropped the soap again, but didn’t try to pick it up. He covered his ears like he was a child again, trying to block out the booming thoughts of what felt like the entire world even as he pretended not to hear the sounds of Kurt knocking Cain around down the hall and –   
  
Why wouldn’t it stop?  
  
He curled in on himself. Fetal position again, which was funny, but he couldn’t quite remember why. He wanted to laugh or scream or  _something,_  but he just curled in further and ignored the spikes of pain streaking down his spine.  
  
At some point the hot water had run out. Charles did not know how long he had been lying in the freezing cold spray, but when he finally noticed the cold he had to work very hard to convince his stiffening body to move. Shutting off the water was a struggle fit for a Greek Epic, if such things were written about pathetic telepaths who couldn’t even protect themselves. Once he was out of the shower, shivering, wet, and naked, he dried himself as quickly as he could with uncooperative hands and a body that protested every movement with streaks of agony dancing across his nervous system. He wrapped himself in towels and after several minutes of staring at the feeble lock, opened the door.

Sanders was not waiting for him on the other side of the door.  
  
Of course he wasn’t.  
  
Charles couldn’t for the life him remember why he’d been so sure the man would be out there, hungry and waiting and –   
  
There was only Raven, still fast asleep and Charles resisted the urge to go to her. She needed her rest, after all, and he worried that if she looked at him, now, like this, she would read the truth as though it were printed on his skin and she wasn’t to know, so he wouldn’t, even though he wanted to hold her  _so badly…_  
  
He stumbled into his bedroom and locked the door behind him. Without bothering to turn on the lights, he opened drawers and trembling hands blindly pulled on three thick sweaters and two pairs of sweatpants and several pairs of nice warm socks before crawling into the bed. He buried himself beneath the covers, creating a cocoon of warmth and softness and tried to pretend that he felt safe.  
  
He didn’t.  
  
He didn’t think he’d ever feel safe again.  
  
He didn’t think he would be able to sleep, either. His mind was a vortex of churning thoughts and feelings that made less and less sense as the pain burned with an insistent ache radiating from his insides and how could he  _possibly_  sleep?   
  
But he did.  
  
And then he dreamed.


	3. Chapter 3

He was angry. So angry. His life was falling apart. Everything was so horribly out of control and it hadn’t been his fault. It  _hadn’t._  He took a swig of whisky and reveled in the alcohol burning down his throat.  
  
A flash of brown caught his eyes and he felt excitement thrum through his veins.  
  
 _Pretty._  
  
He wanted it, oh how he wanted it. Wanted to wrap himself around it, inside and out, own it the way he couldn’t own himself.  
  
Like a panther stalking his prey, he followed his mark. He was getting better at this and soon he had the little bitch against a wall. The slut made excited little noises and he could barely contain himself.  
  
Strong. He felt so strong and –   
  
 _Pain._  
  
It hurt, so much, hands on him, inside him, pulling touching, bruising, ruining. He was being torn in two by large hands and greedy eyes and it felt  _good_  - no, no, it hurt, it hurt. He didn’t want it. He didn’t even though he did, and he wasn’t asking for it, but there was no alcohol now, and he could feel their pleasure and there was no excuse.  
  
Disgusting, disgusting and Raven was there, staring with wide, sad eyes and then she was turning away from him. He could see her walking away, disappearing in the distance. He tried to call out to her, beg her to stay, to save him, but couldn’t speak around the cock lodged down his throat.  
  
He couldn’t breathe.  
  
She was leaving him.  
  
He wanted to run after her but he couldn’t move. Alone, alone, he was so alone, sinking down into black nothingness. He was drowning. The nothingness clung to his skin like tar, sliding down his throat and gathering inside of him, filling him up, suffocating him.  
  
 _Stop. Please, stop. Make it stop._  
  
But it wouldn’t stop. And there was only darkness, only the black, sticky tar consuming him whole and leaving nothing behind.   
  
He couldn’t breathe.  
  
He couldn’t –   
  
Charles woke gasping for air.  
  
His body was on fire. He was sweating from the heavy blankets and layers of clothing and every inch of him cried out in all-consuming agony.  
  
He couldn’t breathe. He kicked at the covers of the bed and had to fight not to scream at the spikes of pain shooting down his back with every desperate jerk of his legs.  
  
He was trapped.  
  
He struggled harder and managed to push back the comforter enough that he could throw himself off the bed. He hit the floor hard, but he was safe. He was safe.  
  
He lay unmoving on the floor for a long time, unable to even think about shifting slightly for the pain pulsing through his body. Eventually, though, the agony dissipated into a manageable ache and he could breathe again.

Unfortunately, his time on the floor did nothing to diminish how disgusting he felt. The details of his dream had vanished in the haze of pain that had followed his awakening, but he still felt dirty, so dirty, inside and out. He shuddered and bit back a whimper of pain.  
  
He needed a shower.  
  
Charles forced himself to his feet and stumbled to the door. He hesitated only a moment before jerking the door open. To his great relief, the room was empty but for a still sleeping Raven.  
  
He walked as quickly and quietly as he could to the bathroom. He was so focused on not waking his sister that he managed to ignore the way each step sent glass-sharp slivers of pain streaking through his insides. Once the bathroom door was closed and locked behind him, he paused to catch his breath, leaning against the solid wood of the door and doing everything in his power not to  _think._  
  
After a few minutes the pain subsided and he began to consider taking the few steps needed to get him into the cleansing heat of the shower. Just as he was about to move he made the mistake of glancing at the bathroom mirror.  
  
His face was a mess of bluish-purple bruises.  
  
He looked away, feeling sick.  
  
Lord, he needed a shower.  
  
He began pulling off his many layers of sweat-dampened clothing and couldn’t remember how he’d gotten them on so easily only a few hours ago. The sweaters were the first to go, but that was also a mistake, since it gave him a close up view of the horrible black splotches littering his torso. Without thinking he ran a hand over the marks and couldn’t help but recoil from his own touch. He could feel the ghost of Sanders’ foot slamming into him again and again –   
  
Out and in, out and in, Sanders thrusting into him, taking and taking and taking and why wouldn’t it stop and –   
  
Charles sank to the floor; eyes shut tight and hands clamped instinctively over his ears.  
  
Calm. He needed to be calm.  
  
He took slow deep breaths, or at least tried to. He felt as though something was wedged inside of his throat, choking him, making it impossible to breathe and he just –   
  
Calm.  
  
Calm.  
  
Calm, calm, calm.  
  
Repeating his wish for calmness didn’t actually make him any calmer, but the litany was somewhat distracting. His heartbeat began slowing at about the hundredth iteration of his mantra. He lost track of the number of repetitions to took before he could breathe properly again.  
  
His skin itched.  
  
He really needed a shower.  
  
His hands felt like useless wooden blocks, but he managed to maneuver himself out of his pants and socks with his eyes closed while still leaning back against the solid comfort of the locked door.

He crawled to the shower and felt sick at the sight of the soggy mess of cloth lying bunched up on the floor of the shower. He didn’t want to touch it. The clothing was dirty and he couldn’t help but feel that touching it would make him even dirtier than he already was. But the practical part of him knew he couldn’t just leave it there. Raven would find it eventually and she would ask questions. So he reluctantly snatched up his wet outfit and dumped it on the floor beside the toilet.  
  
His hands felt as though they’d been burned by the damp clothing and his stomach churned. He practically jumped into the shower and turned the water on as hot as it would go. He spent several minutes just clawing desperately at his skin before he managed to restrain himself long enough to grab the soap. He scrubbed himself raw at least four times, but no matter what he did he still wasn’t  _clean._  
  
The bar of soap dissolved in his hands halfway through his fifth washing. He resisted the urge to race out of the shower and turn the flat upside-down searching for more. Instead he tried to figure out how he was going to sneak off with those ragged, soiled garments and find a quiet place to burn the memories away without Raven noticing.  
  
He got out of the shower and dried himself as quickly as he could without looking too closely at his battered and repulsive body. He wrapped himself up in towels and, trying to ignore the horrible ache emanating from…there, picked up all of the scattered bits of clothing.  
  
He stood awkwardly before the locked door for a few minutes before reason won out over fear. He took a deep breath and opened the door.  
  
Nothing was there. He felt impossibly relieved once more and considered himself all the weaker for it.  
  
He walked back to his room as quickly as he could bear; silently hoping as he went that Raven would sleep just a little while longer. He automatically locked the door behind him before he went about hiding the soiled remains of yesterday’s clothing and the dampened sweats at the bottom of his closet.  
  
He then dressed in his most comfortable “old fuddy-duddy” outfit, as Raven liked to call it. He couldn’t help but feel somewhat exposed with only a few layers of cloth between him and the world, but knew that wrapping himself up in a winter parka would not actually make him any safer.

Logic did not make the desire to go dig his winter clothing out of storage any less real, however, and he barely dredged up enough mental willpower to force himself away from the sweater drawer. As he did so he became aware of the steadily throbbing pain emanating from his temples. He had been so worked up before he hadn’t noticed the headache.  
  
There was a bottle of aspirin in the bathroom, he remembered. That would help him think, help him rationalize this…mess into something more…manageable. And it might lessen the other pains of his body.  
  
He hesitated only a moment before cautiously opening the bedroom door, but his quest for painkillers was quickly forgotten when he saw what lay on the other side.  
  
Raven was waking up.  
  
He had a few precious moments to watch while her back was turned. His heart warmed as he watched her stretch lethargically like the innocent child he wished she would always be. And then she twisted around to greet him with a sleepy smile on her face.  
  
Charles smiled fondly at her, even as he saw her expression falter in obvious shock.  
  
“Charles!” she exclaimed. “Your face, what happened? Are you – ”  
  
He kept smiling as he watched her trail off, her eyes growing dull for a moment before they cleared.  
  
Raven grinned broadly at him. “Morning, Charles,” she said happily. “We should have thesis story-time more often; I haven’t slept so well in ages.”  
  
“That would be nice,” Charles said and regretted it. His throat felt raw and thinking about how it had been damaged immediately made him feel sick. “Not tonight, though, I seem to have come down with a bit of a cold.”  
  
“I’d say this is what you get for hitting on Mrs. Hetro-whatever, but we can’t have the Professor-To-Be passing out on his thesis, can we?” Raven teased, only the barest hint of inexplicable hurt underscoring her playfulness. “Go back to bed. I’m going to take a quick shower, then I’ll get you some tea and whatnot, okay?”  
  
“You don’t have to,” Charles protested automatically, even though it hurt to speak.  
  
Raven just rolled her eyes and Charles decided that forcing the issue would be worse than just letting it go.  
  
“Fine, though, could you, ah, get me some aspirin as well?” he asked cautiously.  
  
Raven gave him an odd look, but quickly shrugged off whatever was bothering her. “Sure,” she said. “Now scoot.”

Charles watched her flounce off to the bathroom and when she finally shut the door behind her, let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.  
  
She hadn’t noticed.  
  
Of course she hadn’t noticed, he thought derisively. He didn’t know why he’d half expected her to immediately sense his betrayal and call him out. Perhaps it was because this was the first time he’d broken his promise to her since the day a little over a decade ago when she’d demanded her privacy in a fit of teenage pique. But she’d only ever been aware of his presence in her mind before because he’d  _let_  her and now that he had a reason to keep his mental interference a secret…she would never know how blatantly he was abusing her trust.  
  
She was his only family, his only friend and he knew that if she ever found out about this, she would leave without a word. That was okay, though, because as far as he was concerned, she would never know the truth. She didn’t  _need_  to know. This was for her own good, for her own protection, after all.  
  
So even though he felt like he was stabbing himself in the back, even though rendering his word, a thing he’d previously held so dear, meaningless felt like sawing off his own arm, he would do it anyway. He would lie to her for the rest of their lives.  
  
He was already weak and ruined. What was one more stain on his soul?


	4. Chapter 4

Charles only allowed Raven to coddle him for that first day.   
  
He could not afford to accept any more than that. He feared that if he allowed his “head cold” to go on, he’d break under the weight of her compassion and tell her everything. He couldn’t let that happen. So, after that one day in bed he forced himself to resume his life as though nothing had changed, carefully hiding his bruises from her gaze and gently easing her suspicions about his strange behavior.  
  
There were fewer of these concerns than he had expected. It should have made his life easier, given him one less thing to worry about. He didn’t know why the ease with which he deceived her  _hurt._  Why it made his heart ache. This was what he had wanted, wasn’t it?  
  
Yes, it was, he told himself as he struggled to keep his head above water day after day. He refused to let him himself dwell on pain he felt every time Raven accepted his half-assed lies about his strange behavior with a bemused and slightly irritated smile without him needing to use his telepathy to convince her he was fine. He just wanted to move on, get on with his life and pretend that he was fine.  
  
But he wasn’t, of course.  
  
He could not escape the conviction that everyone could see how broken and used he was, just by looking at him.  
  
The two weeks it took for the bruises to fade were pure torture. He went out of his way to hide the marks on his face; dipping into every mind he passed on the street or in class and making everyone see what he wanted them to see. He made himself unblemished and pure in their eyes. The way he used to be.  
  
Charles knew he would never be clean again. Hours spent scrubbing himself raw in the shower had taught him that, though he still tried to scour the filth from his skin at least twice a day. More, if he had to spend a prolonged amount of time outside the safety of the locked flat.  
  
He had always healed slightly faster than normal, a fact that Cain had both hated and utilized once upon a time. However while the bruises on his face disappeared quite readily, the black stains on his torso and the ugly finger marks burned into his hips seemed to linger far longer than they should have.  
  
Or maybe they weren’t and it was all in his head.  
  
That was certainly a possibility.

He would sit curled up on the floor of the shower, run soapy hands over his bruises and wonder why this was different. Why did Sanders’ shadow follow him everywhere he went? Why couldn’t he lock that night away in a neat box in a back corner of his mind? Why couldn’t he move on?  
  
But no matter how hard he tried, no matter how many hours upon hours he spent attempting to regain control of his mind, he could not win. There was no way to contain the disgust and the fear and the self-hatred. He could not rationalize it or hide from it the way he could from his childhood. There was no way to label this “Past” or “Over With.” It would never be over.   
  
There was no escape from that night. The bruises faded and his body healed, but nothing could ever undo the unmitigated betrayal by the most basic facet of his being. The specter of his power’s treachery would never cease to haunt him, an ever-present fear that renewed itself each and every time another mind brushed against his own.  
  
Every step outside the flat was an exercise in prolonged agony. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of minds swarming his, skirting over him, seeing, evaluating, judging…  
  
He felt their gaze, the weight of their attention and was convinced they could see how ruined he was. Sanders’ mark on him was there, evident in every move he made, every word he said, how could they  _not_  see it?  
  
He knew, of course, objectively, that it wasn’t possible that every stranger on the street and acquaintance on campus could see how damaged he was just by looking at him. He also knew that most people paid him little to no attention at all, caught up as they were in their own lives, their own problems. He knew this because while he hid his bruises from sight he also checked and double checked the minds around him, repeatedly and obsessively.  
  
Again and again Charles learned that no one had any idea what had happened, but he never believed it for long.

And inevitably, sometimes people  _did_  notice him.  
  
He was used to catching stray thoughts about himself. The…sexual ones. The bemused appreciation of the girls he flirted with in pubs, the less common, but more colorful fantasies of some of his male acquaintances. Such thoughts were normal and at one time he had considered them completely harmless, mostly ignoring them except for when he didn’t. Given the opportunity he would never say no to a few drinks and a quick shag with a pretty faced co-ed or a broad shouldered peer.  
  
But now… _now_  even the prospect of getting aroused made him sick. A few weeks after the…incident he tried it. He locked himself in the bathroom with…suitable materials and tried to recreate his old routine. He’d thought it would help, remind him that his body was capable of feeling more than just pain.   
  
That little experiment left him gasping for breath, his heart pounding so hard he thought he was going to  _die_  and all he could hear was Sanders’ voice cooing on and on inside his head –  
  
 _Hard already? Asking for it. Fucking whore, so good, pretty little bitch_  
  
– and he was  _scared._  Terrified and helpless and it was only a matter of time until it happened again and he couldn’t do  _anything._  So weak and worthless and he was going to die there on the bathroom floor with his pants around his ankles and his cock in his hand like the slut Sanders thought he was and –   
  
Needless to say, he never tried that again.  
  
Unfortunately his resolve did not stop other people from thinking about sex. People always thought about sex and his sudden lack of interest did nothing to change that. Objectively, he knew the individuals in question meant no harm, but sexual thoughts tended to be loud and the ones directed at him, louder still.  
  
There was no avoiding them. Every thought of that nature stood out bright on his mind, impossible to ignore. Each one was an assault, a vicious a reminder of his shame and impotence. Even if there was no intention attached to the thoughts, the pure desire in them was enough to convince him that anyone was only a thought away from dragging him into an alley and –   
  
The stray thoughts he garnered from the co-eds, the innocent ones about  _such a handsome face_  or  _look at that bum_  or  _kind of a square, but Mm, I’d like to see him without that silly cardigan_  made him want to fold in on himself in disgust. The other thoughts, the vivid ones featuring Charles naked in various positions and places moaning with pleasure, begging for more, left him shaking with terror and shame.

He quickly learned to avoid pubs since that cut down a great deal on the number of…those thoughts he had to endure. He knew he needed to go once in a while so that Raven wouldn’t wonder about the sudden change in his normal habits and he  _did_  go. But every trip was performance. He made himself invisible to everyone but his sister and a chosen young woman who would have absolutely no interest in him from the start and read from a script written by similar encounters in his past. It was a horribly awkward affair, but he could endure it once a week or so in order to placate his sister’s worries.  
  
What he could not stand, though, was the alcohol. The pubs reeked of it and the scent reminded him of that darkened pub and the alley and –   
  
Charles had been a  _connoisseur_  of alcohol, an expert in the subtleties of flavor and type. Now the taste of it on his tongue was enough to send him fleeing for the bathroom. It didn’t matter what he was drinking; his stomach was indiscriminant in its rebellion.  
  
He knew this because he checked. One evening he barricaded himself in his room with the good, high quality stuff that he saved for special occasions in an attempt to prove that it was only the ambiance of the pubs that was causing the reaction. He tried so hard to separate the alcohol from the experience. He made himself comfortable and was as alone as a telepath could ever be. He opened the sealed bottles himself so he could see that there was nothing extra in the liquid. He did so many things.  
  
It didn’t make a difference.  
  
The reaction was almost instantaneous.  
  
He emptied his stomach into the rubbish bin several times before he threw away his favorite bottles of brandy, scotch and rum in a fit of despair. He was completely cut off from one of his favorite pastimes, one of his most trusted comforts and there was literally  _nothing_  he could do about it. He cried himself to sleep that night (an increasingly common and distressingly unpleasant occurrence) like he was a child again and couldn’t deal with endless noise within his mind.  
  
The other problem with the pubs was that were too many people. Though he could stay invisible  _and_  make people keep a good distance from him without anyone noticing the odd empty space in the middle of the room, it was a complex and tiring trick to maintain for long periods of time. He did it, of course. He didn’t have a choice. He’d take mental exhaustion and the near constant ache behind his eyes over someone touching him, even by accident. Hell, he’d rather ram a rail spike into his own head than let someone touch him.  
  
The first time someone besides Raven so much as brushed up against his arm he nearly threw up in the middle of the street. Luckily he managed to find a public toilet before he lost control of his stomach. 

In the past Charles had always yearned for physical contact with others, but now he found himself instinctively shying away from people. Flinching at the casual touches he had once craved. Anyone could set him off, but his reactions were exponentially worse when the person touching him was a tall man with too-large hands.  
  
A distant associate from school would want to shake his hand. His advisor would rest a hand on his shoulder and compliment his work….Charles was forced to alter the memories of many acquaintances and even a few professors, frantically smoothing away their wide-eyed recollections of his panicked and occasionally violent reactions to physical contact. Then he would rush to the nearest public bathroom, lock himself in a stall and curl up on the floor, waiting until the tremors stopped and he could breathe again.  
  
He felt as though he was constantly on the run, deliriously afraid to be alone one moment and petrified at the thought of having anyone come near him the next. He was always scared, even in his own home and he just wanted it to  _stop._  
  
Why wasn’t it over yet? He asked himself that question again and again, but there was never any answer.   
  
Sometimes when he woke from dark and terrifying memories recorded in perfect detail by his treacherous mind, feeling trapped and breathless, the knowledge of his impending defense was the only thing that could convince him to crawl out of bed in the morning.  
  
He threw himself into working on his thesis with the desperation of a drowning man. Genetics was a safe, abstract concept that he could safely lose himself in for hours at a time without accidentally reminding himself that there was something  _wrong_  with him. Besides, his defense  _was_  coming up soon; he couldn’t allow the unfortunate events of that night to stop him from completing his thesis. Sanders had stolen his pride and his dignity, had turned his body and his mind against him, had polluted everything that made him decent and good…If there was one thing he would not allow that man to take from him, it was his research. He had to believe that his genes would not betray him the way every other part of him had.  
  
As the day of his defense drew nearer, Charles allowed himself to become more and more withdrawn. He locked himself in the flat and poured over his books for hours on end, refusing to acknowledge the outside world at all. Raven bore his reticence well, though Charles feared that she would stop putting up with it once he had properly earned his degree. In the meantime, he suffered her kindness with guilty pleasure. He went to bed on her demand, lying awake for hours on end until he fell into fitful dreams haunted by things he tried not to think about. He ate the food she brought him at regular intervals to make her happy even though it tasted like ash in his mouth. He allowed her to pull him out of the apartment for brief “refreshing” walks that left him desperate for a shower and smiled while he did it.

And then it happened. He stood before the crowded hall of people, their thoughts washing over him in a horrifying wave. He couldn’t stand the weight of their focus, their scrutiny, bearing down on him with suffocating intensity.  
  
Dirty. He felt so  _dirty_  and every mind in the audience felt like a whirlpool, threatening to draw him in and pull him under, drowning him forever in a sea of  _other_  from which he would never be able to escape. He was completely helpless. Weak. His heart pounded dangerously loud in his chest and he was suddenly so scared he couldn’t breathe.  
  
Distantly he noticed that people were crowding close to him, but all he could feel was the ever rising surge of raw terror consuming him whole. He saw more than felt his sister touch his arm. Her eyes were golden, which was bad for a reason he would remember if only he could  _think_  and her mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He tried to pay attention to her, to block out the swarming voices and never-ending fear and focus on finding the sound of her voice.  
  
He didn’t know how long it took until he could hear her desperate exclamations of “Charles. Charles!” but by then the terror had ebbed back into the more manageable burden he carried with him every moment of every day. He felt light-headed and numb as he offered his clearly distraught sister a faint smile. He looked out over the chaos of the lecture hall and tried to pull himself together.  
  
Raven was still babbling, clinging to him with worry bright in her eyes. He felt so guilty for making her deal with this mess. She deserved so much better than him.  
  
“I knew something was wrong. I knew it. Charles, what’s going on? I – ”  
  
Feeling as though he was observing the world from behind a glass, Charles froze everyone in the hall.  
  
He had done it, he thought as he took in the disorder that was meant to be the presentation of his defense. He had single handedly ruined his greatest accomplishment, the most meaningful thing someone like  _him_  could probably ever hope to achieve. He couldn’t even blame Sanders. It was his own fault. His own failure.  
  
Charles leaned heavily on the podium, struggling to breathe and wishing he could just stop  _crying,_  as he gazed out into the glassy eyes of his frozen audience. He knew he should take this disaster as a sign and give up gracefully, to just stop  _trying,_  but he couldn’t do it. He wasn’t strong enough to know when to let go.

Hating himself, Charles gently erased the memory of his pathetic breakdown from the minds of everyone in the hall. He guided everyone back to their seats and projected a vision of himself presenting his thesis with a calm and capable air of intelligence that he would never be able to pull off believably in real life into every mind in the audience. It was difficult, tiring work, but if nothing else, the past few weeks had honed his telepathy into a fine-tuned weapon of deception.   
  
He put the finishing touches on the shared hallucination with only a tiny fraction of his attention. The rest of him was busy desperately trying to calm his mind into something resembling order. By the time the illusion had run its course he had somehow regained enough control over himself that he was able to answer the Professors’ questions about his thesis without needing to use his powers for more than hiding the tear tracks staining his face.   
  
When it was over all he wanted was to go home and burn his skin off with boiling water in the shower in lieu of being able to scour his mind with bleach. But he couldn’t do that. He had an image to maintain, after all.  
  
He knew he could just plant the memory of a crazy night of triumphant drinking and ridiculous shenanigans into everyone’s heads, but didn’t think he’d have the strength to force another large and complex false memory on so many people so soon.  
  
So he let Raven pull him along to the pub and made a point to convince her he was smiling as they went.  
  
Charles put on a show of drinking and used the joyous mood of the crowd to do a good imitation of being a happy drunk even though letting all those minds buoy him so freely made him deeply uncomfortable. He only needed to look at Raven’s grinning face as he made everyone see him finish off a rather impressive meter-long margarita to know that he couldn’t leave. Not yet.  
  
He needed a break, though, if he was going to keep the charade up all night.  
  
He was planning on heading to the bathroom and relieving his roiling stomach of its contents when he came face to face with the woman who would tilt his world on its axis, for better or worse, irrevocably rewriting his future.  
  
Her name was Moira.  
  
And she wanted to know about mutants.


	5. Chapter 5

Sitting on the first plane out of England the next morning, Charles wondered for the thousandth time what on earth he had been thinking when he agreed to accompany Moira back to the States.  
  
Well, that was not strictly true. He knew what he had been thinking. He still thought that way, but it was hard to hold onto that thought when, trapped as he was in this metal can filled with intrusive minds and tightly packed bodies, all he could think of was how spectacularly damaged he was. Just sitting in his seat, a simple enough task for most people left him desperate to claw his own skin off, so how exactly did he plan to help Moira and the CIA?  
  
Charles recalled Moira’s memories of the crystalline woman and the red skinned teleporter. The borrowed images were tinged with confusion and fear and above all the agent’s natural inquisitiveness, but Charles did his best to ignore her mental signature and focused on all the things the memory meant to  _him._  
  
He had known there had to be others out there, somewhere; he had Raven, after all, didn’t he? But had never met any of them, had not even heard a whisper of their minds in the back of his head. To know now that there were more of them, more of people like him was truly exhilarating regardless of the fact that he was now hardly worthy of coming close to such wondrous individuals. The prospect was simply too tempting to resist and –   
  
There was more to it than that, obviously. These people, who were like him, but not, were involved in some very dark dealings and the world was completely unprepared for such an attack. The humans would not stand a chance. They needed -   
  
 _And what makes you think that a pretty little slut like **you**  can possibly help them?_  
  
The question whipped through his mind, a strange but uncomfortably familiar amalgamation of remembered voices, the words dripping with hate and contempt and lust.  
  
Charles flinched slightly in his seat and did his best to silence the voice, but in that moment he couldn’t possibly imagine what exactly  _he_  could offer to the cause. The voices in his head had been insisting for so long that he was good for nothing but lying down, spreading his legs and–   
  
Well, it was impossible to imagine that he’d do anything but get in the way.  
  
Charles was very good at getting in the way.

He was struck then by an old, half-forgotten memory. He remembered somehow ending up on the wrong side of Cain’s fists after his step brother finally escaped from Kurt’s study, despite how careful he’d been about hiding.  
  
  
 _“Think you’re so smart, with all your shitty-ass books,” Cain snarled. He threw the old and very valuable copy of Great Expectations that Charles had been reading across the room.  
  
Charles said nothing because he knew that saying anything would only make it worse, but he was thankful that Cain didn’t throw the book at him. The blood might have ruined the book.  
  
“This is your fault,” the older boy said, shoving Charles into one of the bookcases. Cain was speaking of the countless welts littered across his back, fresh from his father’s belt.  
  
“Making me look bad,” Cain growled. He pulled back his fist and slammed it into Charles’ stomach. Charles’ back banged into the sharp edges of the bookcase. Charles fell to the floor, gasping for breath. From experience he knew to cover his head and shield his stomach, but Cain was too fast. Charles grunted in pain as Cain’s foot connected with his gut.  
  
“God, I wish you were dead,” Cain said, his young voice so full of hurt and misdirected rage.  
  
 **Me too,**  Charles thought in a moment of weakness.  
  
Then Cain kicked him in the face and he blacked out._  
  
  
Charles grimaced and pushed the memory aside. Snippets like that had been cropping up more and more after…what had happened. It had only been a few at first, but in the weeks leading up to the fiasco that had been his defense he would be thrown into such fragmented recollections several times a week. Before… _that_  he had gone years without more than a passing thought of those days. He was simultaneously annoyed and frightened to have those thoughts slipping free from the carefully labeled boxes where he’d intended to leave them for the rest of his life.  
  
He didn’t understand why his mind insisted on clinging to those parts of his childhood on top of his vivid memories of the…of what had happened that night. Why was it so hard to just let it go?  
  
That was another reason why he should have said no, should have wiped Moira’s mind and sent her on her way.  
  
But that was hardly the only reason.  
  
Another one was that he would be trapped in a strange place, surrounded by strange people with no easy way out. The entire prospect of putting himself out there, of aligning himself with a government that was more likely to cut him open than listen to a word he said was terrifying. The coward in him had gotten on his knees and begged to be allowed to hide forever in the relative safety of the flat.

But it was more than cowardice that spoke against this ridiculously stupid decision. Every logical bone in his body had known that this was a bad idea, had even drawn up a list complete with diagrams detailing why he was making a mistake even as he opened his mouth to agree.  
  
Agreeing had been an incredibly stupid thing to do and he should undo it, unmake the entire decision. He could still do it. He could still wipe Moira clean and catch a flight back to England or perhaps he and Raven could relocate to somewhere nice and quiet, somewhere like Wyoming. No one lived in Wyoming as far as he knew. It would be nice there.  
  
Quiet.  
  
 _Safe._  
  
And yet…  
  
And yet he wasn’t going to do it, now or ever.  
  
Perhaps it was the child in him that had made the decision. The little boy who still hid somewhere within Charles’ mind, that same little boy who did not know how to lie down and die and could not be beaten into submission, who reached out again and again, regardless of how many of his overtures had been cruelly and often violently rejected. Perhaps it was the little boy in him, who still, despite everything, believed in freedom and joy and love, who could not refuse this call to adventure.  
  
But no, he was oversimplifying. There was more to it than that.  
  
This…thing with the CIA, it was a chance. It was an opportunity to rise above his weakness, to run away from Sanders’ shadow and finally put his past behind him. It was a chance to finally,  _finally_  move on.  
  
He could never be a teacher, he knew now after what had happened at his defense. Merely standing in front of his students would be outside of his capabilities; how could he possibly teach them? He needed to go with Moira. He could remake himself at the CIA; he could refashion himself, if not into something good, at least into something useful. He could become better, he could surpass his disgusting self and be a part of something  _more._    
  
Out there, far from anything he had ever known he might be able to escape his taint and maybe, just maybe, he could actually do something right and worthwhile with his life.  
  
That was all he could think of as he had skimmed Moira’s mind like an open book. All of his fear and self-hatred were nothing beside the sudden flare of hope deep in his heart where he thought it had long burnt out.  
  
Yes had been the only answer he could give.  
  
Of course, nothing could ever be that simple.  
  
A large, sweaty man clumsily knocked into Charles’ arm on his way to the lavatory and Charles forgot all of his fears and hopes for a moment in favor of trying not to throw up in his lap.

***

Raven was there, of course. He wouldn’t have gone without her. Couldn’t have, really.  
  
She practically bounced in her seat all the way to England, full of nervous energy at the prospect of meeting other mutants. But her nerves were as much worry as excitement.  
  
She had panicked when he had mentally shouted at her from across the bar after reading Moira’s mind. And although she had immediately agreed that they had to go once she could make sense of his rambling explanation, she kept shooting him concerned looks out of the corner of her eye. Charles repeatedly assured her that he was simply tired after his defense, but he could tell that the excuse was wearing thin.  
  
He knew that he needed to ease her suspicions again, but he was putting off the inevitable just a little bit longer, soaking in the warmth of her attention for as long as he could keep it. He far preferred that to her occasional inexplicable outbursts which baffled him every time they flared up out of nowhere.  
  
Charles suspected that something was bothering her, but refused to look into the matter. He already broke her trust by manipulating her memories on a continuous basis. The least he could do was not delve into something so clearly private. He knew he was merely drawing a meaningless line in the sand, but he tried to hold to that decision. It was cold comfort, but comfort all the same to know that he could at least grant her the right to keep her personal thoughts to herself which had been the core of her request in the first place.  
  
He once considered asking her about whatever was troubling her, out loud, like a normal person, but he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring himself to demand openness from her when he couldn’t even begin to ask it of himself.  
  
Charles stayed close to Raven throughout the journey, particularly after the horrific trial of a flight he had to endure in order to get to back to the States. Hers was perhaps the only mind he could still touch without feeling baddirtybroken or fearing that he would be dragged under and never released. No, he knew Raven almost as well as he knew himself and since the…since what had happened, one of the few places he could still feel safe was curled up within the familiar thoughts of his dear sister.

He tried to limit the time he spent mentally clinging to her mental skirts because he knew she wouldn’t appreciate such behavior, regardless of whether or not she knew he was doing it. He tried to respect that. He did. However, upon escaping from the confines of that claustrophobic nightmare of a plane, Charles did not have the strength to deny himself the comfort of his sister’s mind. As always, though, he worked very hard to ensure that she felt nothing of his parasitic presence.  
  
He could at least give her that much.  
  
Raven was the reason he made it through those first few days. He rode on the coattails of her enthusiasm and was freer with his abilities than he had ever been, all in a desperate attempt to keep himself from falling to pieces. He could not afford to ruin this opportunity the way he had so spectacularly ruined his defense.  
  
The meeting with the CIA…wasn’t a complete disaster. He used Raven as his anchor, a shield against the cold eyes and skeptical minds judging his every move. However, even with that protection he had been on the edge of panic throughout the duration of the meeting. Instead of acting like the calm, responsible consultant he needed to be, he ended up babbling like an idiot. He even managed to botch outing himself as a mutant, stupidly getting himself mistaken for a Communist Spy.  
  
His sister had been forced to out herself due to his incompetence. And although he hated himself for his rather pathetic handling of the situation, he loved his sister all the more for the fact that she had barely hesitated to come to his aid.  
  
He didn’t deserve her. He really, truly didn’t.  
  
Of course, they could have walked out of there at any time. Charles was stretched thin from stress and too little sleep, but he could have done it. He hadn’t wanted to, though. His hopes for this opportunity with the CIA were too high for him to simply abandon them and he was immeasurably glad that it hadn’t come to that. In fact, it seemed like he would be meeting other mutants even sooner than he had expected if the news he had gleaned from those officials’ minds was true.  
  
There was hope yet, even if he needed to duck into a bathroom for a few minutes before they set off while he waited for his heart to stop beating so loudly.


	6. Chapter 6

Things began moving very quickly then.  
  
But not so quickly that Charles couldn’t take a moment to make some necessary arrangements.  
  
On the way out of the facility, Charles grabbed Agent MacTaggert, taking care to put on a little show of power that would be the right mixture of unnerving and intriguing as he guided her to his side. She took the bait easily enough and Charles was glad. Out of the all the minds he had encountered in the CIA she was the only one he could be sure would act in his and Raven’s best interest without him having to… _reframe_  her motives for her.  
  
What’s more, she was a good agent, if underappreciated and underutilized because of her gender. She was smart, genuinely capable and had an admirable sense of duty. She was just as talented as any of her fellow agents who differed only in that they had a Y chromosome, but her mere presence did not make Charles break out into a cold sweat which made her far more preferable than any male agent he might have been saddled with.  
  
Still, while Moira was infinitely more tolerable than their other options, there was a different, yet related problem which Charles knew was going to be an issue.  
  
He could sense the fragile seed of attraction in her mind, even now and it made him deeply uncomfortable. Charles knew that MacTaggert was extremely professional, but that was not enough. The potential was there. If he was going to be able to work with her he could not afford to deal with Moira having…less than platonic feelings for him, however minute the possibility. His overactive brain was already predicting what would happen when he found himself pulled under the rising tide of her emotions; every overwhelming thought and feeling that he could not return. The mere thought of it made him feel simultaneously mortified and nauseous.  
  
And what if she did more than feel? What if she acted on those thoughts? What if she got it into her head to  _touch_  him? He wouldn’t be able to work with, her woman or no, in that case.  
  
As they drove to the airport Charles reached out with his mind and carefully twisted Moira’s feelings for him, minimizing any romantic feelings and encouraging the platonic ones to flourish. The change was slight, but it would ensure that the agent would only ever view him as a friend.  
  
Making the change was more difficult than it might have been since he had to be extremely careful not to change anything but that one aspect of her thoughts. His task was made even more challenging by how tired he was, though his exhaustion was hardly a new impediment. He was always tired these days, and he had yet to let that stop him.

When he finished, he glanced at the agent, who was staring intently at the case notes on Shaw, and wondered if he should feel guilty for manipulating her. He didn’t, but thought that perhaps once he might have.  
  
He had done the right thing. He knew he had, even if he  _had_  been avoiding making this sort of alteration for weeks now.  
  
The temptation to make himself completely invisible or at least undesirable plagued him every time he stepped out in public, but he had refused to try it on the grounds that he couldn’t possibly force that change on every single person he met in a day. Then again, that had been when the only people he talked to on a regular basis were his sister and his thesis advisor.  
  
He hadn’t quite realized just how far outside his comfort zone his dealings with the CIA would take him until he’d stood before that table of officials and had seen for himself just how exposed he was. Subverting any romantic feelings was a necessary precaution if he wanted to work with these people, and at that moment, despite all his fears, Charles wanted nothing more than for their alignment with the CIA to be a lasting and profitable arrangement for everyone involved.  
  
Besides, Charles was incapable of having a real relationship now. Intimacy in any form was completely beyond him. It would be unfair to Moira, he told himself, to even let her hope. She deserved far better than him, anyway. She deserved someone whole and good and who could love her the way she should be loved.  
  
But it was not only for Moira; he knew. It was also for himself.  
  
He had to have one link within the CIA that he could get close to without falling to pieces and Moira was the only possible choice. He needed to be able to work with her and he needed to  _know_  without a single doubt that she was safe.  
  
So no, he didn’t feel any guilt.  
  
But for some reason his stomach wouldn’t stop churning, even though no one but Raven was even close to touching him.

***  
  
Charles stood on the deck of the Coast Guard vessel, once again painfully aware of just how insane this entire venture was.  
  
But he couldn’t run away now, could he?  
  
Well, he  _could…_  
  
However Raven’s presence at his side, a firm and completely necessary anchor to the here and now despite Moira’s misgivings on the matter, reminded him that he couldn’t just run away from this.  
  
He needed to do this. Wanted to, even. But there was so much riding on his performance. All of the men and women on this boat were depending on him and the very thought of that dependence made him sick. He couldn’t even protect himself. How on earth could he possibly…  
  
Charles bit back on what he knew would be a hysterical bark of laughter. If only Agent MacTaggert knew what sort of person she had pinned her hopes on. She wouldn’t look at him like that, like he was normal, like they were  _equals_  –   
  
With some effort Charles controlled his breathing. He couldn’t lose control, not now.   
  
He needed space to think.  
  
With a thought he nudged Moira along with the nameless man dressed in black and their retinue of guards, back a few steps.   
  
Once they were far enough away the minute tremor in his hands disappeared, which was funny because he hadn’t even noticed that he was shaking. Raven shot him a troubled look from where she stood, still right by his side, but he shook his head, waving off her concerns. He was fine, or at least as fine as he ever was, and how he felt didn’t much matter anyway, did it? He had a job to do.  
  
He couldn’t afford any distractions.  
  
Charles looked out over the dark water and saw the clean white lines of Sebastian Shaw’s lavish yacht. He took a deep breath and shoved his awareness of his own stage fright to the very back of his mind. This was different than the fiasco that had been his defense. There would be neither speeches nor expectant crowds tonight. All he needed to do was use his telepathy. He could do that. He was still useful for this kind of task, if nothing else.  
  
Charles slowly brought his right hand to his temple. He found that he needed the crutch more and more recently, but the telepath steadfastly avoided thinking about what that might mean. Rather than turning inward, he cast his mind out across the water, searching for his quarry.

“Shaw’s here,” he confirmed distractedly as he brushed the man’s mind. “He’s not alone,” he added moments later even as he shied away from the nausea inducing cesspit of Shaw’s mind before it could draw him in and focused on the man’s comparably less repellent companions.  
  
“They have a teleporter,” Charles muttered, excitement creeping into his abstracted tone. The man, Azazel, had a fascinating ability, and Charles was about to delve deeper when he ran into a wall.  
  
He had never seen anything like it before. Before that moment he could barely conceive of such a blockade. He had never once been denied access to a person’s mind by anything but his own choice or his personal limitations. His main concern had always been trying to stay  _out_  of the minds of others, not getting in.  
  
Such an unexpected phenomenon should have been terrifying in its alien nature, but at his very core Charles was and always would be a scientist. For the first time since he discovered the existence of mutants besides his sister and himself, Charles felt his curiosity ignite with a burning intensity that easily overrode the niggling fears that lurked continuously at the edges of his awareness.  
  
He pushed experimentally against the wall.  
  
It pushed back.  
  
Charles leaned heavily against Raven in surprise as he hastily strengthened his shields. He distantly heard his sister cry out in alarm, felt her arms around him, supporting him. He didn’t answer her. He couldn’t. All of his attention was focused on the mental barrier; he had none to spare for the physical world.  
  
He spread his mind over the barrier, looking for weaknesses. Whatever was behind the wall pushed back again, diamond hard and coldly impersonal.  
  
A surge of excitement escaped the enforced calm of his mind.  
  
She was good, he thought appreciatively with a giddy glee that felt completely foreign.  
  
He didn’t have time to wonder exactly how he knew that there was anyone at all behind that wall, let alone a she, however he knew her gender just as surely as he knew that that she was also telepath. And wasn’t that just spectacular?   
  
Yes, she was certainly quite talented, but for all her skill, he was better.  
  
He slammed against her mind and marveled at how she rocked back under the force of his presence. For a moment he thought the barrier would shatter, but the wall held.  
  
That was okay. It didn’t matter; none of it mattered.  
  
His mind hummed with power; Charles felt more alive than he had in weeks, in months, or perhaps in his entire life. There was only the world of the mind, this battle on a playing field designed just for him and he knew with complete and utter certainty that he could break through her defenses. 

He could  _win._  
  
All he needed was a little time and then he could whittle away her barrier into nothing and then, and then! He could meet this new telepath mind to mind. He could know her completely, could perhaps even befriend her, could for the first time meet someone not just with mutated genes, but who was like him. Someone who understood, who knew the pain and the joy that came with knowing the most intimate secrets of the human heart, he could –   
  
But even amidst the heady flow of adrenalin rushing through his veins, Charles could feel himself fraying. Somewhere very far away, back in his own head he knew that he was dangerously close to shutting down the vital functions of his own brain in order maintain the power he was exerting against this strange and wondrous diamond woman.  
  
For a moment he wanted to continue regardless of the consequences, to fly as high as his wax wings would let him, heedless of the heat of the sun –   
  
“Charles!”  
  
Raven’s voice rang out over the vast landscape of his mind and despite the siren call of the challenge and the possibility of another telepath he could not refuse her call.  
  
He drew away from the diamond-like presence, following Raven’s calls back to his body.  
  
But he wasn’t the only creature cursed with curiosity. The other telepath was gliding toward him, attempting to follow him. Back on the boat his body was probably scowling in concentration, but in that moment Charles’ body existed only at the very borders of his awareness. That was for the best, of course. Intriguing or not, the diamond woman could not be allowed any further. The sanctity of his mind had been breached once; he could not bear it a second time.  
  
His mind was his own and there was no room in it for her.  
  
With a lifetime’s worth of practice, Charles slammed up the strongest shields he could muster. He sensed that she would not let that stop her and as she surged forward once more he struck a calculated mental blow that sent her staggering.  
  
Adrenalin surged once more. Fight. He needed to fight. He wanted to chase after her. Interesting or not, he realized now that she was a threat; she was tainted by Shaw’s disturbing mind and she had tried to attack him, tried to  _see_  him. He needed to-  
  
“Char – -ome ba- -”  
  
It took him a moment to place the voice resonating through his mind. He tried to focus on the sound, but it was difficult.  
  
“Charles! Please, don’t do this!”

Raven.  
  
That was Raven calling him desperately from somewhere far away. He needed to find her. She needed him, he knew instinctively and so he needed to go to her, even though quite suddenly all of his energy seemed to have vanished. He hung there in his mindscape feeling horribly empty. He wanted to stay there, to drift away into nothingness in the wake of that diamond wall.  
  
But Raven was calling him. Firm and gentle. She needed him; so he went, even though it hurt.  
  
He followed the sound of her voice and then his eyes were opening and he found himself looking up into tear-filled golden eyes. He automatically opened his mouth to say something about the color, but could not make him mouth form words and even if he could have spoken, he couldn’t for the life of him remember what he was going to say.  
  
Charles blinked slowly and realized that he was lying down on the deck. What an odd place to be, he thought dizzily. Hadn’t he been standing before?  
  
Raven’s mouth was moving and unlike him her vocal chords were actually managing to produce vibrations. But the shapes did not match the sounds and the world was both too sharp and too blurry for him to make sense of anything.   
  
He didn’t know how long he lay dazed in his sister’s arms before he noticed the presence of others, bodies and minds, leaning far too close to him. Then all at once everything snapped into place and he surged to his feet. He swayed as he stood and Raven shouted something, but he could not let them touch him. He didn’t know why, but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t –  
  
He stumbled back until his hands were clutching some strangely shaped, but fairly sturdy part of the boat.  
  
“Charles, are you okay? What happened?”  
  
Only one person asked it, but they were all thinking it, he knew regardless of how airtight his shields were. His head pounded with the weight of their thoughts.  
  
“…Sorry,” he said, far too long after the question had been asked. “Never happened before. There…there was someone like me there.”  
  
“Like you?” the same person, Moira he realized, asked, stepping closer.  
  
Charles reflexively took a step back and began babbling. “Incredible. Could actually feel her, I –” He cut himself off, trying to reign in the confused mess of his own mind. “I'm so sorry,” he continued after a particularly long awkward silence, though he at least attempted to sound professional, “but I don't think I'm going to be of much help to you tonight. You're on your own.”  
  
But Moira was still looking at him with wide eyes. Charles self-consciously wiped his hand across his face and blinked in confusion when his hand came away wet with blood.  
  
His nose was bleeding, he realized blankly and the sight of it made him want to lash out in fear. He could feel a wave of terror swelling somewhere inside of him and suddenly everything was red, so red and -   
  
A strong wind sent him staggering and then there was no time for fear as it wasn’t a wind but one of Shaw’s mutants wielding whirlwinds like a weapon across the water.


	7. Chapter 7

The next thing he knew, Moira and Raven were dragging him across the deck of the ship, desperately seeking shelter from the raging whirlwinds of Shaw’s mutant. He was tripping over his own feet, trying his best to follow their lead even as he instinctively cringed away from their hands.  
  
Fear lurked somewhere on the edges of his consciousness, but there was no room in his chaotic, over-strained mind to do anything but move forward and cling to his own sanity.  
  
He automatically reached for the comfort of his sister’s mind, but the moment he opened himself up the tiny fraction necessary to connect with another he found himself swept up in a torrential wave of anger.  
  
Rage so much rage.  
  
He was drowning in it. In everything. Fast, so fast, everything at once, all mixed up and traces of diamonds, sharp, cutting deeply in every direction, meant to hurt. Meant to kill. Losing everything. Water pressing down, lungs straining -   
  
Pain.  
  
The glint of knives, like diamonds and glass, a coin in his hand and destruction everywhere. Hunger, his insides clawing in on themselves and so many blank faces. The smell of burnt flesh and ash staining his skin and  _sonderkommando._  Aren’t you happy I’ve protected you from this?  
  
Terror.  
  
Always afraid and always angry and alone forever and ever.  
  
She was gone. She was gone.  
  
And he was young, standing before a desk and there was a  _manmonsterdemon_  smiling with false promises and the smell of chocolate and –   
  
 _Move the coin_  
  
He couldn’t, he couldn’t –   
  
And his mother –   
  
Charles clung to the woman’s face as everything swirls together. Something solid, something real. The look in her eyes.  
  
He watched her lips move,  
  
 _Alles ist gut. Alles ist gut. Alles ist gut!_  
  
The promises spoken in a language he does not speak, but understands anyway. Lies, all lies, nothing she could do, but she tried. She tried. And Charles had known such devotion was possible, in theory. But it had always been something he could only dream of. A fairytale, meant to be experienced only second hand and never like this, so strong and bright, in the darkest of nights.  
  
But here she was, staring down eminent death with a smile on her face. A smile for him, for her son.  
  
Her face is overlaid with another, blond and blue eyes, but cold, so cold and the words did not match, the mouth did not move, merely tightened in polite disinterest. Worthless, so worthless, she’d give him up in an instant, to save herself, for just one more bottle. But here, he could feel it, her devotion and he coveted it. Would die again and again to feel it. Just for a moment, even with the water pressing down, choking, swallowing him up.

_Mama. Mama._  
  
A gun shot. And the metal is alive. He can feel it everywhere, but Mama. Mama. She’s on the floor. Mama.  
  
Why?  
  
And he is drowning in pain and suffocating on ashes. Knives glint and diamonds cut and make it stop, please –   
  
Alone. So alone and cold, freezing, hungry, always. Pain.  
  
A memory solidifies in the chaos and he is sucked in, a dark room. Empty. No, a man, in uniform a red band around his arm in front of him. Hands on his head. Holding him, touching him. On his knees. Being pulled forward. What, what –   
  
His mouth is forced open. Sick, he feels sick, thinning hair pulled tight, the man’s dick being forced down his throat –   
  
The door banging open. Doktor, there, monster, angry. So angry, but not at him –   
  
The man, not him, in the chair now. Doktor’s hand on his shoulder, the knife placed in his hand.  
  
Revenge. Make him bleed.  
  
The memory burns. A farce or reality. A trick, always a trick to break him open, remake him in the image of his maker. And death. In death there will be peace. They’ll die together. Over. It will be over.  
  
The water. Pressing down. Hold on. Hold on.  
  
Charles managed to pull himself free with a gasp, freezing on the staircase where he found himself, his mind reeling.  
  
He had experienced attacks like this in the past. He had suffered terrible things in the minds of other, had been terrified and confused and lost and angry along with those victims…but the first hand experience was different, he knew. So much worse.  
  
He did not understand how that man is still going, still fighting. Charles can’t even begin to imagine what he would have done in the man’s place. He’d have gone made. He would have killed himself to escape it.  
  
Not Erik. Erik was the man’s name and Erik had not succumbed. He was strong. Damaged and lonely, but so impossibly strong. Determined.   
  
He survived. He had purpose. Erik was no longer afraid, he was making himself safe. Erik would never again roll over and play dead.  
  
But he was going to die, Charles realized abruptly.  
  
Erik was going to drown trying to stop Shaw’s submarine.  
  
And Charles…Charles couldn’t let that happen. Not to Erik.  
  
Charles pulled his hands from Raven’s and Moira’s grip. “Someone’s in the water,” he informed them. Then he turned and ran back up the stairs, heedless to their shouts. “Someone’s in the water,” he repeated himself as loudly as he could as he rushed blindly through the crowd of seamen. He tugged off his jacket and kicked off his shoe before throwing himself off the side of the boat.

The water was freezing, but he barely noticed, his entire mind focused on honing in on the roiling anger that was Erik. Closer and closer, down and down and then he was latching onto the man.  
  
Erik struggled in his grip and Charles couldn’t hold on, so he reached out into the man’s tattered mind, calling desperately,  _You can't. You'll drown. You have to let go._  He tried to sooth the diamond shorn edges of Erik’s mind.  _I know what this means to you, you have to believe that I do, but you're going to die. Please! Erik, calm you mind._  
  
Charles had just accepted the possibility that he would drown here with Erik, when the man abruptly released his hold on the submarine allowing the pair to bob to the surface. Charles gasped for breath and clung to Erik’s arms, not trusting the man to return to his insane task.  
  
“Who are you?” Erik snarled breathlessly.  
  
“My name is Charles Xavier,” Charles said.  
  
“You were in my head! How did you do that?” Suspicion. Charles understood. How could he not? Still, he tried to smile over the noise in Erik’s head. Focus. He needed to focus.  
  
“You have your tricks, I have mine. I'm like you. Just calm your mind!” He knew he was begging at the end, but how could he not? Erik was overwhelming. Alive, but overwhelming. Charles projected calm as best he could. He needed to think.  
  
“I thought I was alone.” The man’s voice was overlaid in Charles’ mind with that of terrified little boy.  
  
“You're not alone. Erik, you're not alone,” Charles said. It was a promise. It was a fact.  
  
Neither of them was alone anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately this is as far as I ever got in _Stained_. This isn't a perfect ending, but it an ending...as well as a beginning. I may at some point decide to come back to this story and write the second half of it. I may not. I will however do my best to write a summary of what I intended to come after this. 
> 
> If I ever do write the second half of _Stained_ , I will take down the summary and replace it with that.


End file.
